omen will show em how.

"The present conditions is very good. The present generation is beyond
me.

"I heard my folks set around the fireplace at night and talk about
olden times but I couldn't tell it straight and I was too little to
know bout it.

"We looked all year for Christmas to get some good things in our
stockings. They was knit at night. Now we has oranges and bananas all
the time, peppermint candy--in sticks--best candy I ever et. Folks
have more now that sort than we had when I was growing up. We was
raised on meat and corn bread, milk, and garden stuff. Had plenty
apples, few peaches, sorghum molasses, and peanuts. Times is better
now than when I come on far as money goes. Wood is scarce and folks
can't have hogs no more. No place to run and feed cost so much. Can't
buy it. Feed cost more 'en the hog. Times change what makes the folks
change so much I recken."

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Ben Johnson (deaf),
Clarendon, Arkansas
Age: 84
Black

"Steve Johnson was my owner. Way he come by me was dat he married in
the Ward family and heired him and my mother too. Louis Johnson was my
father's name. At one time Wort Garland owned my mother, and she was
sold. Her name was Mariah.

"My father went to war twice. Once he was gone three weeks and next
time three or four months. He come home sound. I stayed on Johnson's
farm till I was a big boy."

Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Betty Johnson
1920 Dennison Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 83
[Date Stamp: MAY 11 1938]

"I was born in Montgomery, Alabama, within a block of the statehouse.
We were the only colored people in the neighborhood. I am eighty-three
years old. I was born free. I have never been a slave. I never met any
slaves when I was small, and never talked to any. I didn't live near
them and didn't have any contacts with them.

"My father carried my mother to Pennsylvania before I was born and set
her free. Then he carried her back to Montgomery, Alabama, and all her
children were born free there.

"We had everything that life needed. He was one of the biggest
planters around in that part of the country and did the shipping for
everybody.

"My mother's name was Josephine Hassell. She had nine children. All of
them are dead except three. One is in Washington, D. C.; another is in
Chicago, Illinois, and then I am here. One of my brothers